


The Legacy of the Past

by Esoop



Series: Howling Wasteland [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games), Silk Song (Video Games)
Genre: Fluff, Lore - Freeform, Not as serious as my other Hornet fic, Not finished its possibly abandoned, Storytelling, Weavers, history lesson, not even kind of canon, why the weavers left haunts my dreams really why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27811984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esoop/pseuds/Esoop
Summary: Hornet's memories of her childhood before and during the infection. The history of the Weavers, The containment of the radiance, and the death of the king.Based in the same AU as my other hornet story, These are the memories that Hornet's forgotten.
Relationships: Hornet & Midwife (Hollow Knight)
Series: Howling Wasteland [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034952
Kudos: 10





	1. Weaver History

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hornet learns history

"Hornet, dear, did I ever tell you about your step mother?"

"She's pale like dad, and she manages the gardens, but I've never had a chance to really talk to her"

"Well that won't do at all! You must know your history my dear..." Midwife lifted herself and pulled a 180, worming over herself to guide Hornet to towards the weavery.

Going anywhere with Midwife was a slow process, centipedes were slow, and the nigh unnaturally large size of Midwife meant that she had a lot of heaft to move through the small tunnels and large gaps. But Hornet didn't mind since she let Hornet use her as a bridge or ladder whenever applicable, making the strenuous climb to the hidden village much more fun.

The Weavers mostly lived in their den towards the middle of the deepnest. But they kept a secondary weavery in the village for the queen's use and to keep records. 

The two finally reached the overlook from the tunnels. The normal leap of faith needed to reach the village neutured by Hornet hitching a ride as Midwife reared up and pulled herself across the gap in one motion. The lowest levels housed the spiders of the kingdom, with each sucessive platformed they climbed having a different caste of bug until they reached the middle of the village. Here perishables and food-prep were housed in woven sacs hardened with paste. 

The top level was her favorite. Her families house was up here. By far the most splendid of the homes in the village, where most were just hanging by silk attached the celling, hers was actually physically built into the top of the cavern the village was in. 

Right now it was empty, the servants off hunting and her mother in the sacred kingdom with her dad. But the weavery was more active then ever. Weavers crawling all about the building carrying silk rolls too and fro, the eternal engine of weaver industry in full force. Crossing one more gap on Midwife's back and they had arrived, all but one Weaver too busy to greet them.

"Friskk dear" Midwife cooed to one of the less busy looking weavers crawling on the outside of the building. The Weaver turned to her, noticed hornet, and made an affirmative sounding grunt, heading into a hole in the silk covering of the Weavery carrying a spool of silk. Several moments later they returned through the main door. 

"Its good to see you again young princess, kept up with your practicing im sure." There was some level of embarrassment in his voice. They had just begun teaching her their arts when Herrah's orders had come down and they had to stop the lessons.

"Of course!" She pulled the silk seal out from one her dress' deep pockets. The small crude thing had no real power or meaning like the grand works of the Weavers did, but she was proud of how she had captured her own likeness in the silk. Midwife waited while the Weaver commented on the trinket, and spoke up once more when the Weaver pulled back.

"Would you escort us to the record room?"

The Weaver agreed and led them through the main door, hornet still riding Midwife as she crawled through the large gate.

* * *

The Weaver entered first, and Hornet had to unmount in order for Midwife to fit through the relatively small entry for the archive. Once they had all gotten into the room, Friskk crawled over to the sliding frames which housed the historic weavings and stood up on two of his limbs, checking the frames before asking,

"And what aspect of our history would you two be interested in today?"

"Today i'm teaching the princess of her ancestry, of her sires Lady."

The Weaver seemed somewhat disappointed, but fliped through the frames one by one, until he reached near the back of the stack,

"Then you'll wish to see one of our first frames, from when we arrived in these lands. In the days when the grass of the path was vibrant and the Interlop... when your father hadn't arrived." He swung out the frame he had stopped on and continued, "I'll take my leave, the queens frames are more advanced then any we've done since the old land." He crawled out of the room onto the roof through a hole in the wall, leaving the two alone in the room.

"What did he mean, 'When he hadn't arrived'?" Hornet asked. As far as she had known, her father had existed as long as the land had, like the sleeping god of greenpath.

"All in time my dear, we are here to learn about exactly these questions after all" Midwife got in a position where she could rest comfortably as she turned the frames, and Hornet sat on the springy silk floor.

* * *

Hornet had only ever seen maps of the whole of Hallownest on the wall of her fathers chamber, she had never looked for cartography stalls or shops in the city, and few of the citizens or knights she had visited had any interest in seeing the whole of the kingdom, they all knew their ways around any area that was important to them. As such, the first frame that Midwife showed her was quite a shock, a dyed silken map showing not just the city and surrounding lands, as her fathers did, but rather the entire land, from the wilds above her, the basin that her father palace laid in, all the way to a strange area to the furthest east which she had never heard of. It hit her that she had traveled between her home and the city many times, but she had barely seen any of the land, and of what land she had heard of, the stories only told her of another small portion.

"Now, the Weaver clan has plenty of history, but they left it behind along with the frames when they left the old lands..."

"I know about this part, it was the first thing the Weavers taught me."

"I know you know dear, but they haven't told you what they saw when they got here"

"Sorry"

Midwife giggled, "The Weavers didn't chart the wastelands at the time, they were in a bit of a blind wander after the bad times at the old home, but the wind called them here, sure as silk, just as it called most of the kingdoms inhabitants. Speaking of which, I don't think your mother's taken you to the surface yet has she? You two should see the storms from the cliffs, they're quite the sight."

Hornet hadn't been to the surface at all yet, there was a path through the wilds, but the clans stayed out of those lands if they could help it. The sacred kingdom's crossroads were the only other way out, and they had been overrun with the infection.

"Now-in-days there's a small village there in the valley, but when the Weaver clan arrived across the wastes, they saw something strange cresting the sheer cliffs, a pale tree."

Her eyes widened. She had heard about the cliffs, they say that they were taller even then the walls of the palace.

"The howling cliffs were no challenge for our crawling kin, and they saw your step-mother in her ancient form once they had crested the hills."

Midwife swapped the frame, showing another. This one showed the form of her step-mother taking up most of the frame, her form filled a circle, and surrounding it many other symbols normally associated with greenpath were also placed in circles which were then linked to the main circle.

"In those days the Weavers say that the entire valley was vibrant, covered in thick thorns and rampant flowers, that you could hunt by simply waiting in a bush for a docile beast to wonder your way. And in the center stood the White Lady. She was the size of the city, and she watched over her valley as a god."

Hornet was perplexed, "But i've met her in the city, she bigger then anyone, but she isn't that large. And why would she leave?"

Midwife tutted, "I was getting there dear."

"Now in those days, we lived in the canopy of the forests, because back then trees grew, which were made of proper wood, not the shell wood we make our frames out of today, you can actually see the color difference in these old frames which were made back then"

"The spider clans always lived down here of course, but for awhile, the weavers along with my clan lived under the sky, or at least under a thick shroud of leaves. They complain about the designs your mothers having them make, but back then they made tapestries ten times as large between trees, all lost when the lady left though."

"We lived on the surface for quite awhile, eating those pulled in by the wind, and thriving at the base of the lady, though they didn't know she was alive back then. They thought she was just a very special, very important tree, and of course she wasn't nearly so chatty as she is today."

She turned from the frames attached to the string, towards a corner where a cabinet stood on a non-silk part of the floor. She rummaged around in it, and pulled out some shards of wood and silk, laying them gently before Hornet.

"They lost most of their records when they moved to deepnest, and those that made it down were very damaged."

The shards showed the outline of some large creature, and a symbol for light

Midwife sounded sad as she continued, "We really don't know what happened, but the lady was gone, the surface wilted then died, and your father had appeared in the land, the sacred kingdom forming around him nearly instantly, with the lady as his equal."

Hornet was nearly offended, "Wait, we don't know? Thats it?"

"That's it dear, the Weavers seem to not want to talk about the matter, and the pale couple never talked about their past to my, admittedly limited, knowledge." She began re-collecting the fragments.

"Don't you want to know? The Lady was the closest the Weavers will ever accept to a god, and we just don't know what happened?"

"Frankly dear, if the Weavers are grumpy about it, I'm grumpy about it. They keep their records well, and they would have passed it down orally if it were something they were happy about. If you really must dear, then I'm sure you could ask her in person the next time you visit that city."

Hornet rose to her feet and helped with the frames, "I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning, this will likely be the happiest story in this entire series, its on a general trend towards cosmic horror and other such sadness. Im not going for hurt/no comfort or anything, but things will be revealed and stuff will happen that will make situations alot sadder past this point, this warning extends into the rest of the series.  
> `````````````````````````````````````````````````````````  
> If my life depended on it I couldn't tell you how old hornet is in this one


	2. Journey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I dun goofed. Stuff got way more bussy then i expected and i completely lost the trail of this story. I may return to it in the near future, but i likely wont. So heres what I had of the last chapter.

Her father had forbid her going to the surface.

Normally he barely cared what she chose to do or where she went, but he had gone out of his way to track her down and impart upon her just how important it was that she not go to the surfaces from here on out. But she would be stuck in the remains of the Sacred Lands, and she wasn't intrested in living an imortal life down here without knowing the Kings secrets.

She prepared her Needle, the unique double sided pale blade crafted and enchanted in deepnest, but made of ore gifted by her father for some anniversary or event. She had worked on the design with help from all throughout hallownest, she had drafted the design with the weavers, practiced with lesser replicas with the king's knights, and her extended families had trained her in how to use the blade to assist her mobility. The blade was smooth, she had decided against the artistic engravings so loved by both the clans of deepnest and the castes of hallownest. The blade would last her an eternal life, and she had no desire to watch as the art smoothed and disfigured over time.

Her parents had done their best in training her, and it showed, not a mortal bug even during the golden age would have posed her much threat, not the king's knights, and not deepnest's beasts. Her mother had given Hornet her final request before she went to sleep, and her sire was too busy with his side of the bargain to discuss the future with her.

And so she climbed the tunnels of Hallownest. She would find this great secret the King hid, and she would protect the land.

* * *

Her needle flew true, firmly landing in the gut of the large husk. A flick of her wrist, a burst of silk, and the blade traveled upwards, bisecting the husk in a spray of sweet orange liquid. Like the rest there was nothing else inside the bug, its shell the only remaining aspect of the bug not converted to the runny liquid. The Crossroads swarmed with these husks, the result of repeated attempts to reclaim them, all gone wrong. She dreaded to think of the might that a true warrior compelled by the sickness would posses.

She sprinted through the long corridor past the abandoned food carts and slaughtered uninfected bugs, both still rotting, the infection only targeted living bugs it appeared.

Another throw of the needle, this time embedding it in the roof above the overlook of the high tunnel that passed into the room. She yanked the thread, and launched herself onto the platform, breaking once more into a run. She would be in these hallways for hours if she stopped to kill every husk wandering towards her, better to just run past.

She entered into a vertical chamber, this was one of the vital switching rooms. Massive freight elevators were frozen in time, platforms still full of trade goods. This room was calm as she ascended, once she got off the ground platform no husks harrowed her climb. A satisfying clunk met her upon each platform she cleared, all the way up to the celling of the chamber.

This close to the surface there was little husk presence, the few who had been up here had been successfully cleared by the King's Knights for some reason beyond her. Regardless it made the final trip to the well exit far easier. She embeded her nail in the roof of the well far above, and pulled herself to the surface. 

She knew that many still lived in the village up here, but the road was silent and the shop stalls empty. It would be rather eerie if she hadn't just passed through the hellish tunnels below her. She stumbled from shade spot to shade spot, she had never been able to adapt to the sunlight of the surface in any of her visits. The roofs of the village did little to hide her from the high sun, but staying close to them offered more protection from its oppression then open space did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acording to my notes, from here she was going to run into a villager who would direct her to the crystal peak, she would climp it, running into the strange things within, until she reached the peak, where she witnessed TPK temporarily capture "the sun", which would later prove lethal to him. If i ever finish this i'll see what i can do about resetting all this guff.


End file.
